The Washington Post consulted experts to develop a glossary explaining the history and importance of terms like Hispanic, Latino, Latinx, and Latin.
However, this effort also led to discrimination, as Hispanics and Latinos were altered and grouped with negative stereotypes. “I happen to have parents from an older generation,” said the creator of the Call Me Latine website, James Lee, 32. “They gave their children white-sounding names, instead of the typically Spanish-speaking names. It’s a consequence of some of this racial discrimination that they faced.
In recent years, the purpose of coming up with a community name has changed. As more and more people identify as non-binary, teens and young adults began to seek out labels that coincided with gender fluidity, such as Latinx and Latina.
Linguistic purists may decry the new terms as Americanized bastards of Latino culture.
No “right” term exists as language evolves.
Based on advice from professors of Spanish, Latin American studies, and linguistics, The Washington Post has compiled a glossary of terms used to characterize the Hispanic and Latino community.
People can identify with several terms in the glossary, and it is by no means exhaustive. Nationality, age, gender, region, and academic level can all affect which term or terms people prefer. For example, Ana Valdez of the nonprofit Latino Donor Collaborative might say she is Hispanic or Latin when talking to those who are not. But to those in the community, she might say she’s Mexican American.
Hispanic people who come from or have ancestors from a Spanish-speaking country. Many Hispanics are also Latinos, but some Spanish-speaking countries are not located in Latin America, such as Equatorial Guinea and Spain.
The term Hispanic made its first appearance in a census in 1970. It includes the gender, but some linguists find it limited because it implies that the group being described consists of only Spanish speakers. It excludes indigenous peoples whose families have lived in countries before their colonization and neighboring countries such as Brazil who mainly speak other languages.
latin can be used to describe male or mixed groups of people from a Latin American country. Latin applies to individuals and groups of women and girls in Latin America. Many Caribbeans identify as Latino or Latina, but not all.
Latino and Latina gained ground around the same time as Hispanic. Their advantage is that they include some countries that the term Hispanic has omitted – such as Brazil, where Portuguese is the national language.
They follow Spanish language patterns in which masculine words end in “o” and feminine words end in “a”.
In recent years, the terms have become a subject of debate, with critics claiming they prioritize male identities and are not gender specific.
“Using the default masculine form, or even using both masculine and feminine forms, is an erasure of women and people who do not identify as binary gender,” said Jennifer Leeman, professor of Spanish linguistics at George University. Mason.
Latinx is a term that can be used to describe people of all genders who have Latin American roots, as well as people whose ancestors came from multiple Latin American countries.
Latinx is popular in academic circles and among some young Latinos due to its ability to be gender neutral, but outside of academia a large majority of Latinos do not use the term to describe themselves. Awareness of the term has grown in recent years, said AK Sandoval-Strausz, a history professor at Pennsylvania State University.
But a 2020 Pew Research Center study found that less than a quarter of Americans who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino know about Latinx.
When Penn State faculty polled students to decide what to call the Latin American studies department, they ultimately opted for Latina/o instead of Latinx because few students recognized Latinx, Sandoval-Strausz said.
Spanish words don’t usually end in “x”, and some Spanish speakers consider Latinx to be unpronounceable.
Some linguists have pushed back on the notion.
“Latinx communities in the United States have always toyed with language, mixing standard and non-standard varieties of Spanish and English to create the culturally rich varieties of what many lovingly call Spanglish,” said Anne Garland. Mahler, associate professor of Spanish at the University. of Virginia.
Latine is also a gender-neutral term, but the ending “e” is considered a more common and grammatically correct Spanish ending, as in the word estudiante, which translates to “student in English”. Spanish speakers can see the word and know how to pronounce it as “Latin-eh”, said Lee of George Mason.
It also reflects the non-binary vocabulary used by LGBTQ people in Latin America, Mahler said. For example, non-binary people may use the pronoun elle instead of the masculine él or the feminine ella.
Latin@ is shorthand for Latino/a or Latina/o. Latin@ was used on the Internet. But its popularity has fizzled, partly because it is difficult to pronounce. “Latin-ow” is an option for saying it out loud, Ramírez said.
